Playing to Win
by Juliet316 2000
Summary: The year is 2010. Seven years following a horrific massacre at Backlash, a deadly endgame begins. *Prologue not for young or faint of heart*
1. Prologue

Playing to Win  
  
TITLE: Playing to Win Prologue/?  
  
AUTHOR: Juliet3:16  
  
EMAIL: Sweetvalley99@aol.com , Juliet_316_2000@yahoo.com  
  
RATING: R  
  
CONTENT: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, ADULT LANGUAGE, TORTURE  
  
CATEGORY: ADULT, HORROR, DRAMA, ANGST  
  
SPOILERS: Through Backlash 2002, with a minor plot change: Vince never hired the nWo, though Hogan did come back in the Red and Yellow.  
  
SUMMARY: The year is 2010. Seven years following a horrific massacre at Backlash, a deadly endgame begins.  
  
DISCLAIMER: I own nobody in the Prologue. Later chapters are a different story.  
  
DISTRIBUTION: The Realm, Fanfiction.net. Anybody else is welcome to it upon asking.  
  
Playing to Win  
  
Prologue  
  
Kansas City, MO 2010.  
  
Kemper Arena was closed. Had been closed for eight years.  
  
Some said there was a cure around that place. People tended to whisper that bad things happened in that arena. Things like stunts gone tragically wrong and mass murders.  
  
In 2009, the city council of Kansas City, Missouri passed unanimously to renovate the arena and reopen it in February 2010. Many people in the city were opposed, stating the curse and the terrible tragedies as reasons for never opening the arena again. Some augured for tearing down the building completely and building something else in it's place. The arguments fell on deaf ears, and the building was scheduled to reopen with a rodeo on Valentine's Day, 2010.  
  
Some among the council and event organizers had proposed that one of the first events held in the newly renovated arena be a professional wrestling event. That idea drew fire from those both for and against the renovation plans for Kemper Arena. People said wrestling brought nothing but tragedy nearly every time a wrestling event had been held at Kemper.  
  
It was a valid point. There was the tragic death of Owen Hart on May 23rd, 1999 from a poorly executed stunt. There was also the Backlash Massacre of 2002. Nobody who had been at the arena on April 21, 2002, would ever forget the mass murder. It had been the last event held at Kemper Arena and the final event the World Wrestling Federation would ever see.  
  
Up until the halfway point of the Backlash PPV, fans had been treated to a relatively normal WWF PPV. Then a disgruntled former wrestling promoter named Eric Bischoff and a group called the nWo among other disgruntled wrestlers and wrestling personalities invaded the PPV and began killing wrestlers left and right. Nobody on TV ever saw what happened since the feed was cut as soon as Brock Lesner heinously broke a female wrestler named Lita's neck. The people at the arena, however remembered all too clearly.  
  
The crowd watched helplessly as Eric's murderous band killed wrestler after wrestler. Even those backstage like Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko were savagely killed. A traitor to the WWF helped haul Vince McMahon, Ric Flair, and Hunter Hearst, Helmsley to the ring for the grand 'finale.' The traitor took pleasure in watching Eric Bischoff kill Ric Flair, while slitting Triple H's throat with the blade that killed Flair among others. The traitor paused hydrochloric acid in Vince McMahon's face and then stabbed him in the gut.  
  
The next night on what the fans hoped would be a memorial RAW, the traitor and the nWo hauled Linda McMahon and her son Shane into the ring. As the nWo held Shane and forced him to watch in horror, the traitor slit Linda's throat much in the way Triple H's was slit. The individual who sold out the WWF then took great delight watching the nWo beat the eldest of Vince and Linda's children to death. Sadly his body was never seen again after the nWo carried it out of the arena.  
  
Naturally most who had memories of those events were vehemently opposed to the idea of yet another wrestling event taking place in what many felt was a doomed arena.  
  
As shocking as the events of that April night in 2002 were, the only thing that made it more shocking and tragic was the identity of the person who had betrayed the WWF and willfully helped in it's bloody demise.  
  
Vince and Linda's youngest daughter, Stephanie McMahon.  
  
Okay, what do you think? Please let me and my muse know. 


	2. Chapter One: Two Fathers Mornings

Chapter One  
  
Lookie, I got the first chapter done sooner than I expected!  
  
TITLE: Playing to Win Chapter One/? *R*  
  
AUTHOR: Juliet3:16  
  
EMAIL: Sweetvalley99@aol.com, Juliet_316_2000@yahoo.com  
  
RATING: R  
  
CONTENT: VIOLENCE, POSSIBLE RAPE/NON CONSENSUAL SEX, ADULT LANGUAGE.  
  
CATEGORY: ADULT, ANGST, DRAMA, HORROR  
  
SPOILERS: Through Backlash 2002  
  
SUMMARY: The year is 2010. Seven years following a horrific massacre at Backlash, a deadly endgame begins.  
  
DISCLAIMER: Vince McMahon owns all. I own very little.  
  
DISTRIBUTION: Fanfiction.net, The realm.  
  
Playing to Win  
  
Chapter One  
  
Two Father's Mornings  
  
January 2010  
  
Kansas City, MO  
  
A man in his early forties woke up and helped his wife get their two children off to school, kissed his wife good-bye and then headed off to work. Along the way he saw the advertisement for the rodeo show in February that would herald the reopening of Kemper Arena. His knuckles went white as the feeling of dread went through him, yet didn't know why.  
  
He went inside the accounting firm where he worked and promptly sat down at this desk in his office. He promptly went to work on the firm's layout for its website.  
  
"Hey Brandon!" a man called out after knocking on his door.  
  
Brandon Wallace looked up from his work. "Hey Glen," he responded.  
  
"Got the new layout done yet? Boss is getting impatient," Glenn inquired of his friend.  
  
"Almost, give me another half - hour," Brandon replied looking at his computer screen and making adjustments.  
  
"Okay. You thinking of going to that rodeo next month?"  
  
Brandon froze. Any mention of the rodeo or of the arena it was being held in seemed to garner that type of reaction these days.  
  
Brandon sighed, looking up and facing his friend. "I honestly don't know. I'd say no, but Kennedy got really excited when she heard the news," Brandon said, thinking of his only daughter, six year old Linda Kennedy or Kennedy as she preferred to be called. Kennedy had recently became fascinated with horses and was begging her parents to take her to the rodeo.  
  
"Yeah, I know the feeling with too of my own. See ya later for lunch?" Glenn asked as he was leaving.  
  
"Yeah later," Brandon said distractedly half of his mind focused on the web page in front of him and the other half wondering why he didn't want his little girl to see a harmless rodeo.  
  
In a suburb of New York.  
  
Mick Foley woke up early as usual to get his youngest, Michael Jr. off to school. With his wife, Colette's busy modeling career, it'd become commonplace even when she was home for him to have the role of Mr. Mom. Not that the retired wrestler was complaining. He enjoyed the time he got to spend with his nine year old son. It was something his previous wrestling schedule had never allowed with his two oldest, Dewy and Noelle prior to his leaving the sport for good in 2001.  
  
He sighed thinking of friends he knew were dead and gone. Sadly he realized a long time ago that he couldn't dwell on the past. Nor, sadly could he change it.  
  
He managed to get Michael Jr. to his bus for school on time. He went into his office to get some work done on his latest novel, about a rookie wrestler's first year in the sport. He got about half a chapter done when the doorbell rang.  
  
"Mick, honey, can you get the door?" his wife asked.  
  
"Sure, dear," he answered getting up out of his chair towards the front door of his family's home.  
  
"Probably a salesman anyways," Mick muttered as he opened the door.  
  
And got the surprise of his life.  
  
He froze in shock. He could do nothing but stare for a few moments at the person on the other end of the doorway. Mick could not comprehend the friend looking back at him. A friend he never thought he'd see again. A friend he'd seen die in the ring.  
  
"Heya Mick," the man said in that soft voice that Mick remembered.  
  
"O - Owen?" Mick Foley whispered looking at the impossible image of Owen Hart on his doorstep.  
  
Then Mick Fainted.  
  
*VBEG* Well what do you think? 


	3. Chapter Two: Shock of Your Life

_Chapter Two_

_Shock of Your Life_

As Mick Foley slowly swam to consciousness, his head was pounding and the rest of his body was sore. He thought about the strong delusion he had seen; a living, breathing Owen Hart on his doorstep. But that was impossible, right? Afterall, he'd seen Owen's bloody, lifeless body wheeled out of Kemper Arena nearly eleven years ago.   
  
Mick made a motion as to try and rid the images of that awful May night over a decade prior. He discovered to his dismay that the pounding in his skull and the soreness in his neck and back increased to a level he hadn't felt since his wrestling days. As he gave a low moan of pain, he heard the creak of a wooden chair.  
  
"Mick?" his wife's worried voice called to him.  
  
Mick opened his eyes to find his wife leaning over him with concern in her eyes. He struggled to sit up, his sore body protesting the action.  
  
"I'm all right," he said as Collette Foley helped her husband into a sitting position on their couch, "though I think I might be hallucinating again. I could've sworn that I answered the door and Owen was on the other side..."  
  
As Mick talked a figure came around the corner of the entrance to the Foley livingroom. A man Mick never thought he'd see alive again.  
  
"...Of the door," Mick finished softly as he looked at a man that strongly resembled Owen Hart.  
  
Collette looked at the two men with concern.  
  
"I'm going to make some coffee," she said walking out of the room and leaving the two men alone. Mick was looking down at the carpet, while the other man looked quite uncomfortable.  
  
"Mick - " he began.  
  
"Your not him," Mick Foley said shortly, still keeping his gaze to the floor of his house.  
  
"Mick," the other man tried to start again.  
  
"The man I knew died eleven years ago," Mick said, fighting to keep his voice from breaking in front of this impostor who looked like his dead friend.  
  
"It _is _me Mick," the main said in a voice Mick found too familiar.  
  
"Prove it," Mick challenged, finally looking up from the carpet to examine the face of the man who was claiming to be his long - dead friend.  
  
The man in front of Mick sat down on the chair that Collette Foley had previously occupied. He sat there for a few moments as if trying to think of something that would convince Mick Foley of his true identity. The blonde man's eyes lit up and he gave a small smirk.  
  
"What about the time you, me and Shane McMahon put Helmsley's face all over Sable's pictorial?" the man asked Mick.  
  
Mick's eyes widened in shock. Only a handful of people knew what had been done to one of the copies of Rena 'Sable' Mero's first Playboy magazine spread that March prior to WrestleMania XV and Rena apparently didn't want to mention it in her lawsuit that she filed against the World Wrestling Federation several months later. Vince suspected Owen and Mick of the prank but he had no clue that his oldest child was involved in it. Only Mick and Owen knew that Shane, who disliked the increasingly arrogant Playboy centerfold and prime Diva at that time had been involved in digitizing Hunter Hearst Helmsley's head on Rena Mero's body in one of her Playboy issues.   
  
Both men stood up, Mick in shock, finally convinced that his believed dead friend really was standing in his livingroom, alive and apparently none the worse for wear. Mick and Owen hugged both men near tears.  
  
"What? How?" Mick struggled to vocalize the questions that came with confronting the idea of a living Owen Hart.  
  
"I think a better place to start is 'Who'?" Owen said a flash of anger in his eyes. Mick took it to correctly mean who tried to kill his friend that May night Eleven years ago. Mick got a sick feeling in his gut. If it had been Vince who tried to kill Owen, Mick had a feeling he'd have seen Owen alive years ago, after the Backlash massacre.  
  
"Who?" Mick asked his stomach tightening.  
  
Owen's eyes hardened further.  
  
"Eric Bischoff"  
  
ducks


End file.
